n3rfed

CODEMASTERS EXPLAINS HOW ARCHLORD IS GOING TO MAKE MONEY IN THE WAKE OF THAT WHOLE "FREE" THING

Enough teleport scrolls and pet bunny rabbits for everyone.

RED 5 POKES ITS HEAD OUTSIDE

Announces $18.5mil in venture capital, sees its own shadow, and retreats back inside to spend the winter.

HOT! UNCENSORED! HONOR GONE WILD!

What needed to be said has already be saided (it'll be in the Oxford one day, bet on it) over at Tobold's, home of everyone's favorite celebrity.

Click here.

So I did a bit of research, and my fears were confirmed by a "blue name" on the official World of Warcraft forums: "Honor is given at different amounts depending on the opponent you defeat. Doing those calculations on the fly would be extremely taxing on the realms if they attempted to calculate everyone being killed and how everyone involved got parsed out honor and in what amounts. If we are ever able to get to the point where the calculations are able to be done live we would certainly do so."

where r u, DAoC Realm Points?

While that explains why it takes a day to calculate honor, and confirms that honor points gained per honorable kill are still depending on your opponents rank, this confimation opens up a whole new can of worms: How can you have a PvP reward system in which the points depend on the PvP rank of your opponent, but there is no more way of earning or losing rank? Somebody who only started PvP after the patch and now plays PvP all the time will soon be as skilled and well equipped as somebody who did his PvP before the patch. But he will be worth very little honor points to his opponents, because his rank will never go up from 0. The longer this system is in place, the more illogical it gets. If this continues, in a year on the battlegrounds players will actively hunt down the few remaining characters with a PvP rank, because they are the only ones being worth decent points. We are playing PvP in a league in which all the ranks are frozen, but rewards are still given out according to that rank. Totally crazy!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to joining my team-mates in running past the enemy players in Alterac Valley and totally not killing them just so I can engage in some PvE against the Battleground boss first.

WHAT ALL THOSE SECOND LIFE NEWS STORIES WON'T TELL YOU

I hope they got a good price for the land.

THIS MAY BE JUST A TAD MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAT WHOLE DECURSIVE THING

Forget raiders freaking out at drops and addons, items in bank slots disappearing, Warriors flying into a rage (or trying to), and everyone dying to Warlocks. This might just take the 2.0.1 cake. And drama fans, don't worry - I'm sure some players will still have plenty of angst and whine saved up.

As the cool kids point out, whispers and screenshots of a gold dupe have surfaced. Not your "OMG! I sold an item and got double the money back!" kind of exploit either. We're talking tens of thousands of gold. The fun kind.

(I'm happy to see, that even after all these years, people still show their character name when taking screenshots of exploits)

It's all rumors and my-friend-of-a-friend-said so far, but whatever the outcome, at least the screenshots are more interesting to look at than last time.

Late update: It seems only the Mannoroth server is affected.

Blizzard is taking back what Santa gave them. From the Elitist Jerks thread:

Some people were booted offline the day that the event happened and their gold removed right away, no supension, just gone. Some people have reported their bans have been lifted (I do not know if they kept their gold received/items got with the gold/whatever). Some people remain suspended (perhaps the higher amounts of gold received by them). Some people have not been banned/kicked and retained their gold so far (at least as much as 11k). I don't believe anyone has heard anything from blizzard as they just  continue to delete threads made on the topic without an announcement.

And:

I got unbanned. However, all gold was removed from my account - all of it, including legit gold I had two days ago. Our guild bank is in a similar situation; 10k+ is gone with no explanation. Opened a ticket an hour ago and still waiting.

And:

I got to speak with a GM, and . . . I'm not getting any of my gold back. ALL of it is gone. They just vacuumed it out of my account. So, to summarize:

(1) economy floods with gold
(2) i sell two items on the AH for unreasonable amounts of gold
(3) server never comes down, a few scattered accounts get closed instead
(4) when my account comes back up, all gold on my account is removed, including gold i had before the economy flooded

Basically, this was the absolute worst possible handling of this situation possible. Support has always been sub-par, but this is an embarassment.

Pwnt.

AH, 2.0.1, HOW DO WE LOVE YOU? LET US COUNT THE WAYS.

With some players coming to terms with the need to click twice to remove a curse and Warlocks wtfpwning them sideways in the Battlegrounds, attention is turning to other little patch nuances.

Like raid armor dropping that no one can use.

As seen at Foton’s (who may be a little annoyed at this, amongst other things);

With this patch we have released many features/changes in preparation for the upcoming expansion. One of these changes is that Paladin items will now be found by the Horde and Shaman items by the Alliance.

Although some of these classes might not be available by the opposite faction until the Burning Crusade release, this is indeed an intended change.

Try “Although both of these classes will not be available by the opposite faction until the Burning Crusade release”.

Oh, right. The Burning Crusade release. That’s the thing that is more than a month away, isn’t it? Because adjusting some loot tables later is hard.

Tseric, putting on his Compassionate Hat, followed up by posting in another thread.

I'm sure it's easier to pass that judgement from your well-informed, armchair designing position. Because of the way in the whole expansion is being pushed out, the gap that we are currently in was expected to cause a number of issues. With so much content that is being pre-released, we are going to see a number of inconsistencies that will be resolved on release of the expansion. Plain fact is that this is about production schedules and not about you. This is needed for smooth production of the game, because when expansion hits and people are actually patching the rest of the content, we will have more pressing issues than going back to check some loot tables. This is about putting in order as much as we can as soon as we can, so when serious matters come down the road, we have as many resources available to address them quickly. Issues that, I assure you, will be more important than this. This isn't about you. It's about the game. Find something more worthwhile to complain about. This issue will not change until the expansion is released, so railing against me or anyone else on the boards is a categorical waste of your time.

Ahh, so it’s scheduling, not the players that matter. I’m glad we got that straight. Stupid uppity players.

But really, are Raiders, spending hour upon hour staring at a screen full of health bars and wading through waves of trash MOBs to get a bunch of Nexus Crystals in the form of a helmet, going to be rational enough to understand and accept this answer?

Maybe Tseric questioned this too. Soon after the post was made, the thread was deleted.

THINGS TO DO TODAY: 1) MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE, 2) ENGAGE IN SOME RMT

You’ve spent decades devoted to your research. You’re at the very top of your field. You’ve used your brain until it hurt. And you’ve just won a Nobel Prize to boot.

So, what are you going to do now?

a) Celebrate with Swedish royalty and distinguished guests.

b) Head back to the laboratory and work on next year’s Nobel Prize.

c) Do doughnuts on Stephen Hawking’s front lawn.

d) Log into Entropia Universe and party with Jon “Neverdie” Jacobs.

You just know that Craig Mello is going to go home and raid Blackwing Lair with his guild.

"THE MMOBLOGOSPHERE", OR "I CAN SEE MY HOUSE FROM HERE"

You are here, right next to that green line.

(Via Jeff "Not SOE, dammit" Freeman)

SPIKE TV: RIDING THE CREST OF THE POP CULTURE WAVE

It's that time of the year again.

No, Spike, NO.

But you should totally check out this craze that's currently taking the interwebs by storm. Maybe you could use it in a presenter joke or something.

SERENITY NOW!

Raph reports that Wired reports that Firefly will be making a comeback - as an MMO developed using the Multiverse platform.

Instead of making the game itself, the company will hire a development team that will craft the virtual galaxy using Multiverse tools.

"We want to find someone who wants to do something  unique and fun and interesting, not just a re-skin of World of Warcraft or Star Wars Galaxies," Bridges says.

Because the underlying technology is already in place, "I feel confident that we'll see something the public can play sometime in 2008," he adds.

Me, I'm still waiting for a Cop Rock MMO.